THE CHEMISTRY OF COOKERY. 367 



destruction of the nutritive value of its solid portion by rendering it 

 all indigestible, with the exception of the gelatine which is dissolved 

 in the gravy. This exception should be duly noted, inasmuch as it is 

 the one redeeming feature of such proceeding that renders it fairly 

 well adapted for the cookery of such meat as cow-heels, sheep's trot- 

 ters, calves'-heads, shins of beef, knuckles of veal, and other viands 

 which consist mainly of membranous, tendinous, or integumentary 

 matter composed of gelatine. To treat the prime parts of good beef 

 or mutton in this manner is to perpetrate a domestic atrocity. 



I am not yet able to record the result of stewing a sirloin of beef 

 in accordance with the scientific principles expounded in my last. 

 Have no hopes of being able to do so until I can spare time to stand 

 by the kitchen fire with thermometer in hand from beginning to end 

 of the process, or have constructed a stewing-pot, big enough for the 

 purpose, so arranged that its contents can not possibly by any elffort 

 of ingenious perversity be raised above 180°. The domestic super- 

 stition concerning simmering is so wide-spread and inveterate that 

 every normally-constituted cook stubbornly believes that simmering 

 water is of much lower temperature than boiling water, and there- 

 fore any amount of instruction or injunctions for the maintenance of 

 a heat below boiling will be stubbornly translated into an order for 

 " gentle simmering," a quarter of an hour of which would spoil the 

 sirloin. 



I may, however, mention an experiment that I have made lately. 

 I killed a superannuated hen — more than six years old, but otherwise 

 in very good condition. Cooked in the ordinary way she would have 

 been uneatably tough. Instead of being thus cooked, she was gently 

 stewed about four hours. I can not guarantee to the maintenance 

 of the theoretical temperature, having suspicion of some simmering. 

 After this she was left in the water until it cooled, and on the follow- 

 ing day was roasted in the usual manner, i. e., in a roasting-oven. The 

 result was excellent ; as tender as a full-grown chicken roasted in the 

 ordinary way, and of quite equal flavor, in spite of the very good broth 

 obtained by the preliminary stewing. This surprised me. I antici- 

 pated the softening of the tendons and ligaments, but supposed that 

 the extraction of the juices would have spoiled the flavor. It must 

 have diluted it, and that so much remained was probably due to the 

 fact that an old fowl is more fully flavored than a young chicken. 

 The usual farmhouse method of cooking old hens is to stew them 

 simply ; the rule in the midlands being one hour in the pot for every 

 year of age. The feature of the above experiment was the supple- 

 mentary roasting. As the laying season is now coming to an end, old 

 hens will soon be a drug in the market, and those among my readers 

 who have not a hen-roost of their own will oblige their poulterers by 

 ordering a hen that is warranted to be four years old or upward. If 

 he deals fairly he will supply a specimen upon which they may repeat 



